Martina Madden and Anne-Marie Connolly (Peter McVerry Trust fundraisers, pictured here) are taking on a charity challenge this October to raise money for homeless services in Dublin. They are going to trek across Morocco for five days, with the summit of Mount Toubkal as their goal. Mount Toubkal is the highest mountain in North Africa – more than 4,000 metres ...

Clongownian Philip Flahavan (Rhetoric), won a Silver Medal in the Irish Science Olympiad Physics section. (This is the second year that Clongowes have been in the medals.) Philip will partake in further studies at Easter, and may end up going to Mexico in July to represent Ireland. Well done to Philip, the Science department and to Mr Stephen O’Hara, his ...

‘Floods of refugees’, ‘waves of migrants’, ‘immigration flow’… In an incisive article for World Day of Migrants and Refugees (18 January), Eugene Quinn, director of JRS Ireland, identifies a dehumanising tendency in our use of such “hydraulic metaphors”. “It is as if refugees and migrants are a wave that might drown us,” he writes. Taking his cue from the Pope’s ...

December 16, 2008Comments Off on Spirituality for a time of bewilderment

Theologian Gerry O’Hanlon SJ works at the Centre for Faith and Justice, and lives in a corporation estate in Cherry Orchard, at the far end of Ballyfermot. He sees the signs of change this Christmas in the housefront decorations. The recession is kicking in and many people are left bewildered by the rapidity and the intensity of the change. There ...

An Inter-Institutional Centre for Spirituality and Social Transformation has been launched in Waterford Institute of Technology, through the participation (pictured here) of Michael O’Sullivan SJ (Milltown Institute), Sister Bernadette Flanagan (All Hallows) and Michael Howlett (Waterford IT). The current Irish Catholic reports how ChurchServices.tv, part of CatholicIreland.net, is broadcasting Masses live to a growing audience, including some beleaguered Christians in ...

“Some people become priests because they love God, some because they love talking about God, and some, like Fr Joe Kelly, because they love people.” Joe had moved from Dublin to Jersey City in 1968, and worked in particular with students, and later actors – he played a Catholic priest in City Hall with Al Pacino. The crowds who attended ...

Both JRS Ireland and Belvedere College received visits on 5 December from representatives of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD is currently conducting a thematic review of migrant education provision in Europe. Eugene Quinn, director of JRS Ireland, and Elizabeth O’Rourke were able to present the services and activities which they carry out in the area of ...

Three Jesuits were in the national news last week. John Dardis, on RTE’s News at One, talked to Sean O’Rourke about the two Jesuits murdered in Moscow. Edmond Grace has held his line in an exchange of letters to the Irish Times. Richard Leonard (pictured right) from Australia gave radio interviews on the dangers of internet addiction, to Newstalk and ...